Thanks to the Freedom of Information
Act (and a suit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center),
the Department of Homeland Security recently released the 2011
edition of its Media Monitoring reference manual (I rather suspect
that by the time of this release, the content had already been
superseded and replaced with a newer edition, no doubt containing
references to “Occupy,” "Oakland" and “pepper spray.”
Yes, I know, everyone spies on everyone
else, apparently all the time. The fact of the spying itself to me seems less shocking than the apparent extent to which DHS is concerning itself with personal communication. The monitoring job itself seems like a
real yawn, although admittedly similar to what I did the week AOL
loaned out our tech support team to the Community Action Team to
monitor AOL profiles for inappropriate content (“I'm Britni and I
love my kids, Jesus and group sex” {goes on to describe the group
sex in explicit detail}). I realize that intercepting planned
domestic terrorism is a necessary job, but I question how likely such
things are to be organized within a Facebook group or via Twitter.
But here's the thing: it seems to be a
generally accepted truism that the US is “free.” So invested are
Americans in this conceit that they rationalize Muslim anti-American
sentiment as “they hate us for our freedoms.” This notion strikes
me as patently ridiculous, particularly in view of the fact that it
completely disregards the US meddling in the petroleum industry for
the better part of a century. Tell me, DHS, how exactly the US government is any better than that of China or Iran?
Over the last year, the US seems to
have supported and encouraged uprisings against the governments of
Libya and Egypt while lambasting those governments for monitoring and
censoring their citizens. I suggest, therefore, that by revealing the
extant of their monitoring activities, the US has placed itself
squarely in the same muddled ethical territory.
Land of the “free?” I think not.
